


Leaving Skifander

by Han502653



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Klaus really doesn't want to go, Skifander, a bit angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 06:38:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3109823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Han502653/pseuds/Han502653
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He really doesn't want to go, but he can't stay. Zanta is never going to forgive him, and it doesn't help that the twins are inseparable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leaving Skifander

Klaus paused as he looked down into the crib. His littlest one, his daughter blinked up at him. He gave her a broken smile as he gently rubbed a hand through her hair, already long enough to spike in all directions and a much lighter green than her mothers. Well aware that had they both been girls she would be the one he would need to save. But no, the boy, unless there were serious and obvious health problems, was always the weakest, the one to die1.

“Why are you awake, little one?” he murmured in Skiff as he followed her arm to where she grasped her brother’s hand. The two were inseparable2. They either had to be both in the crib of both held less the one left behind would start to cry and upset the other who would refuse to feed. It made what he had to do so much harder. He took away his hand and clutched his eyes shut, “I’m sorry.”

He had come in through the window so not to alert the Novice who was stationed outside the door, ready to run for the Queen should either twin grow hungry. As well as the guard she had posted twenty four seven. She knew her children were not safe, not yet, but she was trying so hard to make it that way. It was one of the reasons she refused a nursemaid, the reason she put up a guard, helped Klaus design the traps.

It wasn’t enough, Klaus thought as he gazed over to the bags he had left by the window. As he thought back to the engineering he had completed to find a substitute for breast milk. She didn’t know what he did, what he overheard, what he was told. If his son stayed here there was a good chance he could be killed, both of them killed and perhaps him as well. Even if they weren’t Zanta would soon find herself losing support, the peoples opinion. They would turn on her and she could once again lose her status of War Queen. He had been told this and he believed it. He now knew why she lost it in the first place, who really had control over the people of Skifander.

His daughter would be safe here with Zanta, would grow up to be a great and proud warrior and perhaps even a Spark. He had to believe that. His son, his son would grow up with his grandparents, with his uncles Bill and Barry and perhaps a few cousins. He would have a happy childhood and be safe. And perhaps, many years from now, he could return to Zanta, once he was secure and capable of taking care of himself, he could come back and beg for forgiveness. For now he had to hope the letter he had left in thei- no her rooms would be enough.

With this in mind he pulled out a small clay container and dabbed the tiniest bit of the cream inside onto his finger. The gently rubbed it below his daughter nose. Almost at once her eyes, still a gentle blue of infanthood blinked and fluttered closed. He then did the same to his son. It wouldn’t keep them down for long, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t risk anything stronger on them. It would give him the time he needed to get a head start.

After a gentle and lingering kiss to his daughters head, and after leaving his old, stitched together rabbit3, the only thing he had left of Europa in the corner of the twi- no her crib, he picked up his son and secured him in the sling he wore. He grabbed the bags he had left by the window, and with one last look back, slipped through. The window closing with a slight click as the traps reengaged.

She twisted in the large crib, her arm reaching out to where her brother once rested, but she did not wake and wouldn’t for several hours.

Klaus didn’t know that Zanta would check on the twins before going to bed, worried that they had slept through a meal. Didn’t know that she would find her child missing and immediately call for the Guardians, believing her son and later her husband had been taken. How she targeted the High Priestess and her line as the ones to have done so, not having been as ill-informed as her husband had thought. How it had been three days before she was forced to bed by her brother and found the letter he had left, and realized what he did. He didn’t know that he almost drew Skifander into a civil war.

Nor did Klaus know that he was walking towards a war. That soon an explosion would happen and a castle would splinter. That Lucrezia would vanish and Bill would go mad. How he would arrive just in time to miss the Boys, to become the target of rumors and fear. How he would come home to find he no longer had a home or parents or a town. That he would in a few short years he would be a conquer and leader of a growing empire. He knew none of this. Instead he would walk, infant held tight in a sling on his chest.

A boy whom would soon be named Gilgamesh would sob for days wanting his mother, his sister. A girl whom soon would be named Zeetha would cry, held tight to her mother’s chest wondering where her brother and father were. It would be many, many years until they saw each other again.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Zeetha is the elder of the two, but is also the runt. She is noticeably smaller than her brother. Since both are healthy had Gil been born a girl, Zeetha would had been the one expected to be put down.  
> 2\. For that first month of their lives, if let down next to each other they would one way or another hold hands.  
> 3\. He had that bunny since he was a kid but after the loss of his brothers and his reawakening ripped it to shreds. His mother sowed it back together afterwards and he never managed to get rid of it since, it meant too much. Lucrezia would later find it amusing to send it with him when she disposed of him. Since she didn’t see that same need to do so with his clothes it really was the only thing from Europa that he had. Zeetha still has it hidden in her room back in Skifander.


End file.
